1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a blood analyzer that analyzes a component such as red blood corpuscle, white blood corpuscle or platelet contained in a blood specimen, more specifically, to a specimen container holder on which a specimen container accommodating the blood specimen is mounted.
2. Description of Related Art
Japanese Laid Open Application No. 2004-4098 discloses a blood analyzer that can analyze a blood specimen in a specimen container without mixing the blood specimen. There is also known a blood analyzer that analyzes a blood specimen in a specimen container with mixing of the blood specimen after the specimen container, to which the blood specimen is accommodated, is set on a specimen container holder. For this type of blood analyzer, the blood specimen is mixed by tilting the specimen container to rotate, and an upper opening of the specimen container is required to be closed by a cap.
Some of the conventional blood analyzers are provided with two different kinds of specimen container holders, on one of which a specimen container, where mixing is conducted, is placed and on the other, a specimen container where mixing is not conducted, is placed.
However, these types of blood analyzers frequently may have problems such as being bulky, complicated in their mechanism, or costly because two different kinds of specimen container holders are provided. In addition, for either of the specimen container holders, a checking sensor to check whether a cap of the specimen container is secured or not is necessary. Since it is necessary for the checking sensor to identify various shapes of the cap due to differences in kinds of the specimen container, there is a problem that the blood analyzer instrument can become expensive.
In addition, some of the blood analyzers analyze a blood specimen by the use of only a specimen container whose upper opening is closed by a cap. This type of the blood analyzer is arranged so that a blood specimen is mixed on a constant basis or a user can operate the instrument to select mixing or non-mixing mode of operation.
However, a checking sensor to check whether a cap of the specimen container is placed or not is still necessary for this type of blood analyzer. In addition, there is a potential danger of an improper operation such as analyzing, without mixing the blood specimen, in an instrument that requires mixing or analyzing with mixing the blood specimen when the instrument does not require mixing due to a user's selection mistake.
Thus, there is a need to provide improvements to current blood analyzer instruments.